How do we mourn? The hidden cost of Covid

I have had some losses over the last few months. Several aunts and uncles, good eggs, in their 80s and 90s, have passed away. Of natural causes, I might add, rather than sudden tragedy; it was their time, and in some cases an end to suffering.

But Covid has exacted a heavy toll. We as an extended family have not been able to gather, sing, share stories, celebrate lives well lived, share a glass, and renew bonds. As I come to middle age, these things begin to matter more and more.

So I ask, as a speculation: in these times, in the absence of community, how do we properly mourn and celebrate?

This is a very good question.
My only brother turns 60 in August, he rented a place in Santa Fe with a big house and smaller houses on the property for the family to come for a few days and have a celebration. He paid non-returnable money in February. And it is not going to happen. My mom is very sad, her only son, her first born, and she is not going to be there. How do we cope? We haven't figured it out yet. Me and mom have no tech or bandwidth for a zoom call, if they decided to do one, we'll find someone who we can use their system to do it.
But it hurts.
And we are absolutely not going to say "oh everything is fine, of course we are going!" We know better than that, me and mom have been very careful about exposure, she's 82, I'm immune system damaged.
But it hurts.

I was just talking to a friend about this. She, like me, has lost some older relatives; the extended family lives together, but they haven't been able to carry out their usual rituals.
I have lived far from my family for most of my life and only visit every year or so, so my family experience is already kind of surreal. My grandparents and best friend in the US died suddenly while I was abroad, none of them had wakes or open ceremonies, and it still hasn't really registered. 5 years on, I still pull up Skype to call my grandmother to call her when I see something I know she would find hysterical.
It's like they just "blinked out", when you're distanced, and I think this is going to be pretty common as we can't go about our usual rituals we have to deal with death. Like you said, getting the family together was an important part of how we processed loss and who we are.
It would be nice to say that "once this is all over we will have a great shebang" but.... I am going to melodramatically ask if this will ever be over. For the foreseeable future I don't see my family being thrilled about me coming from Brazil, and I certainly would not be thrilled about going to visit the folks in Florida. Not even getting into the fact that most of us are polar opposites in terms of beliefs, politics, etc....

(Pearl, I hear you. Mr Okava just turned 50 last month. We were planning to throw a big party in September, when there is a 3-day weekend, invite our friends and family from all over, we even made the beer for pete's sake. It's been cancelled, thank goodness we didn't put down the deposit on the farm we were going to rent out for the weekend. I'm hoping by September we can at least go to the beach for the weekend, but it seems like a stretch)

Is anyone registering the collective loss of wisdom, perspective, and grace that our elders provide?   It keeps hitting me in waves, still, two years in.   When covid first came and ravaged distinct regions, I planted in honor of their losses.   I put in a fruit tree for Italy,  forget me nots for New York,  lilies for India.  

We will mourn collectively, I thought,  when this is done.   Now I wonder.   We seem accustomed to the losses, which are still happening, as if they are now to be expected, somehow better because it seems less likely that mostly everyone will die.

I guess I'm going to keep planting as my way to mourn.  That way, if those who come next have lost their elders, they will at least have food and beauty already growing, waiting for them.

This may make you laugh, but ...

Increasingly, with the old guard passing, what concerns me that I will be responsible for civilization. For maintaining it, for building it, for promoting it, for defending it.

The generations that came through the great depression and world wars knew the value of civilization, of a stable society, and knew how costly and hard won those things are.

Today, those things are assumed to be automatically there, a given, a bedrock of granite. And they surely are not: they can be frittered away, undermined, atrophied, and ultimately lost. Like any system, social or mechanical, they must be lovingly maintained.

I'm feeling the weight.

Not laugh, nod my head.  

For me it's like I'm out in the storm without an umbrella.  I am the umbrella now.  Yipes.

I was thinking today about "The Greatest Generation" (my parents).  There is something amiss with a generation calling themselves the greatest, I have to say.  Yes, they went through all kinds of terrible stuff.  So have our kiddos (decades of foreign war).  Every cohort has their wake-up call.  And every generation can do better than the previous, if we are willing to wake up, observe, remember, and revise.

I have a few remaining elders, friends who are 90+.  They know I'm more frequently emailing them to be sure they're still alive.  Thankfully they think it's humorous, but it's no joke to lose friends.